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On Monday, Nov. 6, Katey Richason and the Miami University women's basketball team will take the floor in Burlington, Vt. for the 2023-24 season opener.
 
And when the ball is tipped at approximately 5 p.m., Richason and the RedHawks will square off with Richason and the Catamounts with a lifetime's worth of bragging rights on the line.
 
Yes, you read that correctly.
 
Richason vs. Richason.
 
Double trouble, if you will.
 
Because when Katey, a junior at Miami, takes the floor, she'll be facing her older sister Delaney, a graduate student at Vermont.
 
Of course, it's not the first time that's happened. Last November, Miami knocked off Vermont 79-73 in front of a crowd of more than 1,600 at Millett Hall, allowing Katey to earn unofficial bragging rights for the year.
 
But with Delaney entering her fifth and final season at UVM, this year's meeting will likely be the last one between the two sisters, so the good-natured trash talk at Thanksgiving might last just a little bit longer (perhaps forever!).
 
"We talk on the phone every day," Katey said. "We like to avoid talking about basketball when we talk to each other, just because that's our lives right now…but once it comes close to Nov. 6, it's going to be a lot more basketball!
 
"We do trash-talk each other a lot. She guarded me for a little bit last year and was like, 'You're not ready to play against me!' There's always that [good-natured banter].
 

"But it's going to be round two this year!"
 
Growing up in the same house and playing the same sport, it should come as no surprise that the two siblings have plenty in common. With just two years separating Delaney and Katey, they were able to compete together on travel ball teams and even for two years side-by-side with Zionsville High School, including a run to the state championship game in 2018 (Katey's freshman season).
 
However, Katey and her older sister have something else in common that not as many people might know or expect. Both Richasons were born with congenital heart defects and had to have heart surgery as children.
 
"My sister's surgery was right away when she was born, because she had an enlarged heart and not as many holes," Katey remembered. "When I was born, I had an aneurysm and seven holes.
 
"I had surgery in second grade, because they were waiting for my heart to develop. They went in —routine procedure, catheter— to repair an aneurysm and two holes, they thought. But there were a lot more holes, and the device wouldn't stay, so they had to go into emergency open heart.
 
'They basically gave my parents 10 minutes to decide if they wanted to do this or not. It worked out, and I was back in school within probably four months, but it was a rough time for my family and friends.
 
"Right after that, I got my tonsils out. Then, I had pneumonia. It was a bunch of things, but second grade was obviously not for me!", she laughed.
 
Recovery from heart surgery was understandably a process for Katey, who recalls walking to the bus stop several months after the procedure and being so out of breath she would have to sit down for at least a half hour before getting back up.
 
But thankfully, the surgery was a successful one and she was cleared by the cardiologist during her third-grade year, with no return visits required.
 
The entire process "taught me that you can't take a lot of things for granted," Richason said. "You're not breathing on your own when you're in emergency open heart surgery on bypass."
 
After she left Peyton Manning Children's Hospital for good, a number of workers there continued to reach out and follow up to check on her. Richason also remembers the way her school staff helped during that time, including visits from the principal and second-grade teacher (even if homework was sometimes involved!). Tevin Studdard, the singer for Richason's favorite basketball team, the Indiana Fever, wrote a song about her. Studdard, the cousin of American Idol winner Ruben Studdard, even came to Richason's elementary school to perform his composition, with a FOX 59 news crew in tow.

    

"All of it just showed me, with how much that meant to me, I can do that for someone else," Richason said. "Making kids in the future feel just as important as other people made me feel."
 
Richason, who is majoring in Speech Pathology and Audiology in Miami's College of Arts and Science, hopes to have the same encouraging impact on others in her future career field that she remembers appreciating during the health challenges she faced as a child.
 
"I've always had a love for kids," the Academic All-MAC selection said. "In high school, I was a cadet teacher (like a student teacher) in a first-grade classroom. If students went to a SLP [speech-language pathologist], I went with them. So, I kind of fell in love with the idea of helping these kids out.
 
"The smiles on their faces just brought me so much joy."
 
This summer, Richason assisted at Miami's Speech and Hearing Clinic in the recently-opened Clinical Health Services and Wellness Building.
 
"A lot of it is trying to encourage [the patient]; you aren't trying to 'fix' them," she explained. "That's the big thing with speech pathology. People think you're trying to 'fix it', but you are giving them the tools to help them out in the future…
 
"Now that I'm in a senior seminar class, I get to go into the clinic and actually take data for the grad student, so I'm in the room with [the kids] and play with them."
 
The major Richason chose to pursue was one of the main draws for her to choose Miami University over more than a dozen other Division I basketball schools that offered her a scholarship to play the sport she loved.
 

"I was always the tallest person in my town…and I could shoot over everyone," Richason remembered. "I had started with soccer – not my thing! But then basketball just came because my sister and I played against each other with a hoop in my driveway.
 
"From there, I started playing with guys at Boys and Girls Club and that's how I fell in love with it."
 
Despite her height, the younger Richason was known for her ability to space the floor, hitting at a 37% clip from outside the arc in high school. "Being able to shoot at 6-foot-1, not a lot of people can do that," she said. "We had five Division I athletes as starters in my high school, so the emphasis was to be able to stretch the floor; we had to get the 6-3 and 6-4 girls out of the paint somehow!"
 
When it came time to commit, although one of Katey's scholarship offers did come from Vermont (where Delaney's college career was already underway), she decided to focus her attention on the Midwest. "I just wanted my own thing, and I wanted to have my own college experience," Katey said. "I didn't want to keep being 'Delaney's younger sister', you know what I mean? And she understood that...
 
"At Miami, I just fell in love with the campus…and I'm close to home, two hours away. I get to play against some of my best friends in the MAC too."
 
Through her first two years with the RedHawks, Richason averaged 3.1 points and 2.6 rebounds while playing an average of 13.7 minutes a night, but this offseason brought a change with the arrival of new head coach Glenn Box.
 
"We talk about it all the time: Everyone gets one percent better every day," Richason said. "He really focuses on player development, and he's involved in every single drill and every individual workout. Regardless if you're the 12th man on the bench or the first person on the bench, it doesn't matter…as each player gets better, we're going to be better."
 
As one of the few returners from last year's squad, Richason is expected to fill several key roles this winter, not only as an opening-day starter, but also as a captain.
 
"Katey impressed me with her IQ and her understanding of the game," said Box. "She's a quick learner and a willing learner; she tries to apply what you tell her.
 
"Her progression has been really nice, especially in her leadership abilities, as she feels more comfortable in her skin and speaking up and doing things…
 
"She has my supreme confidence, as well as our staff's…I love where she is right now in her ability to lead."
 
The 2023-24 RedHawks have a unique roster blend —basically one-third returners, one-third transfers, one-third freshmen— but Richason has played a crucial part in helping that group bond as a true team heading into the season opener.
 
"She has not only my trust, but their trust," Box continued. "She does the work, so they respect that. They see that she has improved, and they know that she has played at this level, so everybody feels good about her ability to speak up.
 

"She brings energy with her voice."
 
Richason said the variety of community service opportunities her team has been able to participate in, especially this summer, has made a difference in helping the group's cohesion. From Special Olympics to youth hoops clinics to a Habitat for Humanity building project, the RedHawks have made an impact all around Oxford in the recent months, while growing closer in the process.
 
"We get to drive by that house and look at it and be like, 'We helped build that!'" Richason smiled. "We learned how to do scaffolding and a bunch of other stuff none of us has ever done before."
 
And now, with the season set to begin, Richason, Box and the RedHawks are focused on another building project: Helping the Red and White lay a foundation during the non-conference season for climbing the Mid-American Conference standings in 2024 and beyond.
 
The upcoming schedule features home dates with Western Kentucky, Xavier and Dayton, the start of the new MAC-Sun Belt Challenge, as well as challenging road assignments including Big Ten foes Michigan State and Michigan before the 18-game MAC slate tips off in January.

It all starts with a good old-fashioned sibling rivalry Monday evening in Vermont.
 
"The uniqueness of it was probably special to her last year: 'I get to play against my sister', and that's a cool thing," Box said. "But I think she's in a different role now, and much more is expected of her than what it was last year, so I'm sure it's probably amplified this time."

While every game is important, including the first one, Richason is excited to see what heights the RedHawks' program can ultimately reach, as a new era of Miami Women's Basketball gets underway.
 
The goals? Aggressive defense. Transition offense. And consistent improvement.
 
"Coach Box asked me once: 'What was the biggest win you ever had?'", Richason said.
 
"I told him: 'It's coming.'"
 
Find more Front Row Features at: MiamiRedHawks.com/FrontRowFeatures.
 
Katey Richason and the 2023-24 RedHawks get the regular season underway Monday, Nov. 6 against Vermont on ESPN+. Miami will host Western Kentucky (Nov. 18) and in-state rivals Xavier (Nov. 27) and Dayton (Dec. 9) for non-conference games at Millett Hall before MAC play begins; season tickets and single-game tickets are available for purchase now!